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Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

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September 29, 2019 By Admin

Self-Care to Reduce Compassion Fatigue

Self-Care to Reduce Compassion Fatigue

First let’s begin with what some people do to counteract the stressors of living in a hurried,“over-technologized” world. Technically, “technologize” is not a popularly accepted word, but it is a sad  reality. We live in a time when texting while driving may become the new addiction-based cause for many, many deaths. This addiction is so strong people do it in situations that could case their injury or death, or the injury or death of others. Sound familiar! It should. Cellphone “abuse” is not so different from the plans of cigarette producers to “hook” us on something we will pay for during many years. So here is a partial list of what people tend to do when faced with severe stressors.

What people tend to do that does NOT improve their stress reactivity long-term:

  1. “Smoke and Coke” – a phrase referring to smoking nicotine and drinking sugary soft-drinks when you cannot cope well and feel dragged down with your stressful life and want to feel stimulated.
  2. Of course there is always excessive alcohol and/or drug use as self-medication.
  3. Sleeping – too little or too much, including late onset and too early awakening.
  4. Eating – too little or too much, and may include binging and purging.
  5. Hoarding for whatever security it brings.
  6. Obsessive compulsive  behaviors – as behaviors for security actions to make us feel better.
  7. Being aggressive when it is not necessary to defend yourself.
  8. Insulating yourself from contact with others.
  9. Living under a “victimhood” self-identification. This can change everything!
  10. Participating in self-harming behaviors to activate neurologic, chemical and hormonal changes in your brain and body.
  11. Engagement in unsafe sexual activities to feel “excitement” and/or “loved.”
  12. Spending too much time online or on my “I-Smart” phone. The phone becomes your life!
  13. Doing too much exercise, especially when injuries occur.
  14. Being a person of uncontrollable empathy – a clear boundary issue that wares you out.
  15. Making your job too much of your life – workaholism or compensation for poor self-esteem?
  16. Making do with professional, work stagnation.
  17. Remaining stuck in impaired practices – the most common one being emotional dysregulation.

What people can do that does improve stress reactivity and may even increase joy in life:

  1. Taking brief breaks from the “grind” of work.
  2. Recognizing and contemplating personal gratitude for what you DO have.
  3. Noticing and correcting unhelpful thoughts, emotions, behaviors and communications.
  4. Learning to hold a positive, optimistic mindset and attitude.
  5. Liberating yourself from “stuckness” in anxiety, depression, addictions, and trauma. This most often requires professional help and/or self-help.
  6. Cutting way back on your online time. Researchers suggest anything beyond 3-4 hours/day is a habitual pattern. What do our jobs, schools and parents contribute to the habitual tendencies of habit-forming digital/electronic devices?
  7. Ignoring FOMO!
  8. Spending time reading, writing,  journaling about helpful things.
  9. Spending time listening and/or playing music.
  10. Spending time dancing and/or doing regular exercise.
  11. Spending time doing regular practice of meditation, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, mindful walking.
  12. Petting your dog or cat – or horse. Looking into their eyes when they allow it.
  13. Spending time walking in nature.
  14. Learning to give/get social-emotional support.
  15. Learning to leave work at work – learn to build emotional boundaries.
  16. Practice limit-setting regarding your boundaries and what you do to help others.
  17. Making a firm commitment to improve your wellness.
  18. Taking part in constructive self-reflection.
  19. Paying more attention to positives ( natural for the brain to do the opposite).
  20. Helpful nutrition, sleep and exercise practices.
  21. Learn to play more; learn to be active in creative expression.
  22. Participating in regular spiritual practices.
  23. Spending more quality time with loved ones and good friends when helpful.
  24. Leaving some time to just be in quiet, silent solitude.
  25. Seeking professional help as soon as you “feel” you MAY need it, or when others who care about you “think” you need it.

You will notice that the helpful list is longer than the unhelpful list. However, the unhelpful behaviors are often more automatic, and the helpful behaviors REQUIRE considerable effort to carry out. Your wellness must be a priority for you.

For more information refer to Bray, B. (2019). Counselors as human beings not superheroes. Counseling Today (October, 2019), 18-25

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC  

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

 

Filed Under: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Calming, Compassion Fatigue, Destructive Emotions, Emotions, Featured, Inner Peace, Interventions, Mindful Awareness, MIndfulness, Recovery, Self -Kindness, Self Care, Self Compassion, Stress Reduction, Success, Tools, True Self, Well Being Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, COMPASSION, MINDFUL HAPPINESS, MINDFULNESS, STRESS REDUCTION

July 16, 2019 By Admin

Helper Self-Care is Important

Helper Self-Care is Important

In the most current issue of The National Psychologist (July-August, 2019) an article linked helper effectiveness, risk management, and clinical outcomes to helper self-care. To make a long story shorter, I will simply paraphrase and re-word the suggestions.  These recommendations support YOUR emotional survival and successful risk management as a helper as well as your clients’ progress.

Here are the specific self-care ideas. Since it is my post, I will add some of my own ideas.

Strategies for Helper/Therapist Self-Care

Focus on your own self-value and growth (personal and professional):

  1. Involve yourself in your own personal counseling/therapy if needed.
  2. Practice awareness and monitoring skills (mindfulness) regarding your needs.
  3. The regular practice of mindfulness and self-compassion skills is recommended.
  4. Spend some time learning and doing what improves resilience – block out time in your schedule.
  5. Do your best to maintain healthy personal boundaries at work and in life.
  6. Recognize and act upon limitations and manage your time well.
  7. Cultivate and practice activities that enhance belonging and spirituality.
  8. Monitor the quality of your inner speech and thoughts – improve them as needed.
  9. Do the same for your inner emotional experiences.
  10. Practice interoception by intentionally noting your inner body feelings – improve them.

Focus more closely on what you find rewarding, reinforcing AND take care of yourself:

  1. Experience the rewards of your work, and have gratitude for them
  2. Understand the stressors, risks, and burnout issues in your job role without exaggeration.
  3. Get help – obtain supervision, consultation, confer with peers.
  4. Do your best not to complain often, since this will make stress reactivity worse.
  5. Figure out ways to get what you need – rest, nutrition, fun, hydration, exercise, connection.
  6. Smile more! Yes, have the intention and behavioral response to improve facial emotions.
  7. Practice a regular exercise regimen.

Nurture your relational world and its objects:

  1. Be active in peer support groups, supervision and training activities.
  2. Network with others via continuing education workshops and meaningful conversations.
  3. Schedule regular meetings with mentors, peers, supervisors.
  4. Make the best of positive emotions in all significant relationships.
  5. If you have pets, spend some quality time with your pets. Play!
  6. Make sure you have a positive social life outside of work.
  7. Discover and re-visit what you find helpfully humorous in life.

Pursue creativity and personal growth in your inner and outer environments:

  1. Do what you can to make your office or work areas rewarding and reinforcing to you.
  2. Consider all of your senses in the above endeavor.
  3. If you can limit the number of high risk-high demand clients you work with.
  4. Obtain administrative supports that may reduce your stress level and intensity.
  5. Take regular self-care breaks at work, alone and in small groups.
  6. Do not isolate! When we feel wounded and worn out, we tend to isolate ourselves.
  7. If possible limit your exposure to traumatic experiences and material.
  8. Practice periods of silence and solitude in nature (“forest bathing” practices).
  9. Schedule and take time off and go on vacations – even if just staying at home.
  10. Continue to pursue your values-driven behaviors.
  11. Continue to learn new things that may improve your work role and outcomes.
  12. If spiritual do more practice.
  13. When engaged in pleasurable activities, use all your senses to experience them.

For more information refer to Bryant, L. M. (July/August, 2019). Self-care is essential to risk management. The National Psychologist.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC  

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Featured, MIndfulness, Self -Kindness, Self Care Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, MINDFULNESS, SELF CARE

October 30, 2018 By Admin

Setting Emotional Boundaries from Work to Life

Setting Emotional Boundaries from Work to Life

Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC

Sometimes setting emotional boundaries from the psychotherapy room to your life outside of work can be a difficult thing to do. Shifting from “experience near empathy” (Kohut), “unconditional positive regard” (Rogers), “hovering attention” (Freud), “the holding environment” in “intersubjective space” (Winnicott),  and compassionate awareness to emotional distancing, separation, and dispassion is no easy task. In more in-depth clinical interactions, the process of projective identification between therapist and client may drain your emotional resources; sometimes being “as if” you were the experiencer of your client’s pain and suffering can take a serious toll on your own emotional resources. At time the therapist’s own emotional life lacks the quality of connection experienced in the therapy session. Success in setting emotional boundaries is a very important self-care skill. It may determine your success, failure, joy, or misery in the clinical work you do. It will definitely prevent most case of “burn out.”

Therapists may wish to complete a brief self-care assessment at the end of each emotionally demanding day. Some things to check are as follows:

  1. Are you taking care of your own physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional needs?
  2. Are you using mindfulness, self-compassion, clinical supervision, or journaling to get to know how you are doing?
  3. Are you valuing yourself enough regarding self-rewards, positive self-talk, cognitive and behavioral restructuring?
  4. Are you giving yourself time to experience some form of creativity?
  5. What about your spiritual self?
  6. Do you spend quality time in nature, among the awe of it all?
  7. Are you involved in the type of quality relationship you desire?
  8. Be sure to act on your own behalf if you find problems in the above areas.

Another very powerful process is to develop improving self-compassion for yourself, often blurring the inner boundaries of your own emotional life experience and the clinical work you do. Therapists are, in the end, only people with a set of specific helping skills. We suffer just like other people do. Hopefully, our training and experience have given us a bit of a positive edge here. Here are some things you may wish to consider to improve your own level of self-compassion.

  1. Using mindful awareness, observe the level and intensity of your self-criticism.
  2. Let go of personal resistance to being real, being your true self.
  3. Get out of your head! Get out of the past!
  4. Do loving kindness meditation often.
  5. Recognize your own difficult emotions (shame, anger, revenge, trying to control others, etc.), and simply be with them as a sacred part of who you are and be real about it. Use emotion regulation to improve things.
  6. Practice much more self-appreciation.
  7. Do not dwell on the pain and suffering of your past. All that stuff probably made you a stronger person.
  8. Welcome and LOVE all of you, with special attention to the sacred quality of your own life suffering.
  9. When you experience or re-experience anxiety, depression, addictive behaviors, or trauma – hold an open, soft heart for it.  Then make changes to improve your life experience.
  10. Always get help when you need it, and do your best not to dwell on what you have little control over.
  11. Be certain too make changes to improve self-compassion regarding any problem areas above.

Fo more information refer to Norcross, J. C. and VandenBos, G. R. (2018). Leaving it at the Office: A Guide to Psychotherapist Self-Care. New York: Guilford.  Neff, K. and Germer, C. (2018). The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook: A Proven Way to Accept Yourself, Build Inner Strength, and Thrive. New York: Guilford.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

 

Filed Under: Boundries, Featured, Leadership, MBSR, Mindful Awareness, MIndfulness, Self -Kindness, Self Care, Self Compassion, Self Esteem, Spiriuality, Stress Reduction, Therapist, Therapy, Well Being Tagged With: EMOTIONAL BOUNDRIES, MBSR, SELF CARE, THERAPY.

June 12, 2018 By Admin

Calming Your Self-Critical Self with Mindfulness

Calming Your Self-Critical Self with Mindfulness

A core problem for many people is their incessant self (or other) criticism. This is a major part of our psychological mind suffering today. In the past life for most people was more difficult, so human basic needs were the energized priorities; today so many of us have been “spoiled” by having basic needs met and lingering with more time to worry about usually less important things.  Observe the number of TV ads aimed at improving how you look, or improving what others may thing about you. Note how the aim of some ads is to improve your perceived status, but not your inner reality of who you really are.Yes, looking ok, being healthy, and more importantly being happy are all important to our successful functioning. However, we tend to be dominated by limbic-brain survival mechanisms that boil down to interpersonal attraction and feeling liked by others. We ask: Am I good enough?  D. W. Winnicott may have some answers for us, and he would be more apt to focus on psychological well-being above superficial qualities – how we look, status,  etc.

Our competitive world and the American economic rat-race cause many to suffer from on-going “red ants” – what I call automatic emotionally loaded negative thoughts. Cognitive Therapy, Recovery Oriented Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy all can help reduce our thought-caused suffering. These approaches when implemented correctly work much faster than psychodynamic methods, which tend to prolong and deepen  dependency on therapists and serve mutually self-rewarding experiences (some unconscious for therapists). All evidence-based approaches work, but how well and how fast do they work? There may be a moral question involved when a therapist uses a much slower method with outcomes that are no  better than more efficient methods. They all involve a strong therapeutic alliance and clinical relationship. That also all involve a deeper change process not simply symptom reduction.

Why do we suffer so much from our own thoughts? Why do we sometimes project our own feared or actual character flaws onto and into others? There are so many causes. It all begins with the quality of our early attachment experiences. How good was the quality of your own early attachment experience with parental before thinkers like Freud came to the same conclusion. And, what about the level of your own self-medication? Do you self-medicate to reach some short-term joy or perhaps to just feel a bit better? In self-medication we eventually learn that it just works for a brief period and almost always leads to more serious problems – addictions of all kind including to our “I-Smart” phones.  figures and other caretakers? Were you reasonably satisfied and nurtured, or were you experiencing what The Buddha called dissatisfaction with what is. Did early life experience leave you craving for what you did not receive? We seek pleasure and hope to avoid pain; The Buddha noted this 2600 years ago – way, way

Below I have listed various self-critical patterns that we human have befriended. I also note some mindful ways to counteract their unhelpful emotional effects. Sometimes is means just taking better conscious control overs our CABS – cognition, affect, behavior and sensory sensations. Other times to means learning and using regularly new skills. At times it means we need professionally competent therapeutic help to improve our lives.

Do what is needed! Here the list.

  1. Self-Devaluing thoughts – STOP and be mindful of your strengths. Use the ‘doing” of your strengths as antidotes.
  2. Feeling inadequate – STOP and recall times when you had a lived experience with success no matter how small.
  3. Deep distortion of self-disdain (even self-hate) – STOP and do your best to practice
  4. mindful self-compassion.
  5. Not being “good enough” – STOP and recognize this is a social construct of unhealthy competition. Use strengths.
  6. No spiritual self – Consider what if any spiritual practice you might explore or do more of. Being in nature helps.
  7. Feeling you do not have enough – Recognize that if basic needs have been met, it is time to work harder on higher emotional needs. Stop thinking – only if I had… then I would be happy. This is almost always untrue.
  8. Hopeless perfectionism – STOP and recognize this is also a social construct based on the projections of others, who believed they were not perfect enough. These introjects became your beliefs. There is NO perfectionism; it is totally impossible to achieve it because it does not exist. Think: I am good enough as I am now!
  9. Stuck in conditioned life (samsara) – where when you are happy you become dissatisfied because it does not last, and when you are suffering you become dissatisfied because you are not happy. Craving and trying to prolong happiness and being without happiness both lead to just more suffering. Find small things to have gratitude for.
  10. A list of more mindfulnesss-based “things” you can do to counteract automatic negative thinking and feeling: live in the present moment; stay grounded with helpful cues – things are ok; allow negative thoughts to pass – do not get hooked by them; Un-trap yourself from a painful past by living presently with what is; practice radical acceptance of what you cannot change; meditate and do yoga a lot to cultivate more inner peace; practice self-efficacy in a very conscious manner; learn and live by the Four Noble Truths; let go of your shame so you can flourish; learn and use The UCLA four step process; use cognitive disputation and reframing more and more often; DO better self-care and learn to locate and “feed” your protective dragons; ask your inner self-helper for guidance on how to be healthier and happier; seek out and learn from an ethical mindfulness mentor; if possible, practice more self-love and less self-doubt. Do more of these practices more often; I believe you will find things will improve.
  11. I realize that some of you may not be aware of some of the terms noted above, so do some good “Googling” about them. When you have a set of practices you like – practice them every single day of your life.

A helpful book to read is Brenner, G. (2018). Suffering is Optional: A Spiritual Guide to Freedom…Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Behavior, Buddhism, Calming, Featured, Meditation Activities, Mindful Awareness, MIndfulness, Self -Kindness, Self Care, Self Medication, Spiritual Energy Tagged With: ACTIVITIES, CALMING, CRITICAL -SELF, MINDFULNESS, SELF CARE

May 19, 2018 By Admin

Interoception and Your Inner Self-Helper

Interoception and Your Inner Self-Helper

Interoception (sometimes called neuroception) is a sensory experience, in which you feel sensations in your body (viscera, heart, throat, etc.) that may be warning signs of limbic surveillance or inner continuity of your inner self-helper – that part of you and your brain that hopes to help you in whatever the situation you are experiencing. Interoceptive awareness is one of the most important mindfulness skills to practice.  In the following meditation, we will visit your interoceptive self and augment its power by repeated the practice. In neuroscience a common understanding is that the larger number of neurons activated in more and more brain areas implies the variant of power (potentiation); more neuron firing in more brain areas results in a more significant life experience. This is one reason why PTSD is such a devastating disorder, and why it is NOT easy to treat successfully. Also, let us not forget the ultimate power of LOVE; people gives their lives for it, and people kill others over it. Let’s get into the practice.

  1.  Sit in a comfortable meditation posture, and close your eyes if you prefer to. If you like you eyes open, gently fix attention downward toward the floor and hold a gentle gaze.
  2.  Now take a few very deep and very slow breaths, in and out. Track the feelings/sensations of the movement of your  breath into and out of the body. Focus attention on this for a few more deep, slow breaths.
  3. Now fully engage your imagination and follow the next few steps. Try to think less, and try to just BE more so.
  4. Focus full attention into your heart area and the viscera below it. See if you feel any form of sensations – even the most tiny sense of kinesthetics. Be with that feeling, and try to keep your mind on it without lots of thinking.
  5. Please do your best to accept that this inner feeling (no matter how slight) is the home of your inner self-helper. it is your intuitive area.
  6. Now our work begins: Using your mind’s eyes, is there a color to this feeling? Focus on it.
  7. Does the feeling inside your body have  any shape? If so, what shape is it? See it, and feel it.
  8. How large or small is the area you feel it in?
  9. How about texture? Is there a discernable texture to your inner sensations?
  10. Is your feeling more hard or more softer?
  11. Does your inner feeling produce a memory of any sound or sounds?
  12. Now focus your energies on making that inner feeling stronger so it can have power to protect you.
  13. Now focus on making that feeling larger – feel your self-helper power This is your self-protector.
  14. Stay with the experience for a few minutes of silence. See what happens.
  15. Become aware, really aware of this feeling. Befriend it fully!

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon!

Filed Under: Featured, Inner Peace, Interoception, Meditation, MIndfulness, Self -Kindness, Self Care Tagged With: INNER PEACE, INTEROCEPTION, MEDITATION, MINDFULNESS SKILLS, PTSD, SELF-HELP

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